Month: September 2008

I mean, look at this.  A pretty little terrace, probably a nice place to sit, but look at the rest of this building.

That brick!  Or siding, or whatever the hell it is??  What do I know??

And this on top of a 99 cent store.  You know, these stores might be fun to shop in. I should shut up and go inside,  I’ll bet it’s like the 5 and 10s of my youth. Okay, I’ll go to one and report back.

There’s a block fair on Bleecker right now, as I type, and usually I am never tempted by anything sold at these things, but there are the prettiest, prettiest tie-dyed tshirts down there right now and I WANT ONE.  The colors are gorgeous, and the tie-dye pattern very subtle and understated.  Not Grateful Dead-y at all. (Not there’s anything wrong with that. I’m a Dead fan.  But fashion-wise, they were not a good influence.)

I think I might shower and shop. Hmm. Shower and Shop. Should be a title of something.

Howard gave me a bunch of time travel movies on CD not too long ago, because he knows I love time travel movies, and I’ve been slowly working my way through them.  For some reason I watched The Sticky Fingers of Time last.

It was the best one, it turns out.  At first I hated it, and almost stopped watching it. I thought it was going to be too hip for words, but thank GOD I kept going. There was something very different about it, something that made me keep going, I wish I could put my finger on it.

I don’t want to say anything else because I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone and you should get a hold of it and watch it. The shot above is a still from the movie.  Good job everyone associated with this movie!

I used to actively avoid 14th Street.  If I had to go east or west around there I’d take 13th or 15th. Those blocks are prettier.  14th was mostly 99 cent stores, or bargain clothing stores, or bargain luggage stores, and with few exceptions, not a lot of great architecture. I just thought it was ugly and depressing.  

At a certain point I stopped avoiding it, and while it’s still not pretty and it’s still mostly bargain stores, it doesn’t depress me anymore.  Plus, my bargain gym is on 14th.

So I’m walking home just now and I think, okay, there are pockets of prettiness, a nice building here, a nice doorway there, like this one.

I looked up the address when I got home and freaking Marcel Duchamp lived there from 1942 until he died in 1968. How can that be? We had him that long, and so close (to where I live I mean)??  I had no idea.  According to Wikipedia he died in France though, but did live in a Greenwich Village studio for many years.  So maybe he didn’t die here, but he lived here a long time and produced his last work of art here, years after everyone thought he had stopped making art.

I took this a few weeks ago, while on a walk up the Hudson River.  My first thought was, ‘That’s kinda ugly and tacky,’ and I walked around and learned that the big H on the wall stood for Hustler Magazine.  I have nothing against porn, yay porn, but what can I say?  Perhaps pornographers are not the best decorators.

I like my subway picture below, by the way. It’s very Edward Hopper-esque, don’t you think?  Oh, and before I forget, I posted the missing persons flyer for Hannah Upp, and she has since been found.  From Gothamist: “The Daily News reports that Hannah Upp, the NYC Teaching Fellow missing since August 29, was found hours ago after she ‘jumped into the chilly waters off Staten Island in an apparent suicide attempt.’ The News says Upp ‘jumped off of a pier on the Staten Island side…[and] was found about a mile off Staten Island’s St. George section just before noon.'”

Sad, but not as sad as it could have been.  Meanwhile, the constantly fluctuating headlines about the stock market are driving me crazy.  I’m not going to worry, or rather, I’m trying not to worry.  I tell myself there’s worse things than losing all your money, and plenty of people don’t have any to lose in the first place.  For me the worst is anxiety attacks, and as long as I am not suffering from them, life is a piece of cake. Okay, terminal illness and death is worse. Bottomline, I am not suffereing from any of those so take my money IF YOU MUST.

All my money is invested through Merrill Lynch!

Meanwhile, my original plan was to hole up today and work on the final edits of my book, something that is a pleasure. But fate (who hates me) has intervened and so far I haven’t edit word one.

But Finney checked out okay at the vet so regardless of anything else, all is right with the world, my personal world that is. He doesn’t have diabetes, which was what I feared, and he doesn’t have anything else that could be picked up upon examination or in a blood test.  Maybe I jumped the gun and he’s fine!  That’s what I’m going with for now.

Here is Buddy, hanging out beside me, in a spot where he doesn’t fit.  See how he hangs off the side, like a good third of him?